Elizabeth Keith

Very rare – not recorded by Miles. The original blocks for this work are thought to have been destroyed in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, along with the majority of the blocks for Keith’s early woodcuts.

One of Elizabeth Keith’s earliest colour woodcuts. No other impression of this early work is recorded.

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Bridge Soochow 1924

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Early proof impression, a very rare example before the heavy diagonal lines indicating rain were added across the whole of the key block. Good impression printed with considerable grey inking to give the effect of the dull showery day which Elizabeth Keith sought to achieve.

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East Gate, Seoul 1920

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Very rare – not recorded by Miles. The original blocks for this work are thought to have been destroyed in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, along with the majority of the blocks for Elizabeth Keith’s early woodcuts.

An outstanding example of one of Keith’s largest and most elaborate original colour woodcuts. This was the print which Keith’s artisans chose to present to her in a series of proof impressions upon her final departure from Japan.

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The Scottish-born artist Elizabeth Keith first went to Japan in 1915 on the invitation of her sister’s husband, who was a publisher in Tokyo. This intended holiday developed into a wandering stay of nine years, during which time Elizabeth Keith travelled widely throughout the Orient. She achieved local notoriety in Tokyo in 1917 with the publication of a group of caricatures which she had made of local socialites and dignitaries. It was after one of these designs was translated into a traditional Japanese-style woodblock print by another artist that Elizabeth Keith first became interested in this art form.

When the publisher Shosaburo Watanabe approached Keith with the idea of publishing her designs in the traditional Japanese woodblock format, Keith leapt at the opportunity. The traditional Japanese art of ukiyo-e colour printmaking involves the sequential superimposition of multiple carved printing blocks. Elizabeth Keith spent the next two years learning the techniques of carving and printing using the traditional ukiyo-e method, finally producing her first fully fledged works in the medium in 1919. Elizabeth Keith went on to produce some of the finest colour woodblock prints of her generation and is now considered to have been one of the world’s finest woodblock print artists in the Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world) style. [more]